“Instead of a dull description of the five tracks and 44 minutes of Fen-like black metal on this Canadian quintet’s debut, let’s do something else. Take out a blank sheet of paper, draw a five-by-five square grid, and write one post-black cliche in each square. Ready? Good, because it’s time for POST-BLACK BINGO!” When you play Post-Black Bingo, you win or you…shoegaze.
“So Hideous occupy an interesting niche for me. As a post-black group with orchestral flourishes, their sound is unique enough to stand out in an over-saturated genre, but it’s never been compelling enough to make me a fan.” New York City continues to pump out some interesting variants on black metal. Must be something in the hot dogs.
“Longtime readers will recall that Kronos does not like Deafheaven. I suspect nobody does, since I see copies of Sunbather in every record shop I enter, meaning that despite the hype, that vinyl is not getting to consumers. And while I’ll continuously bash the band for being, as it has been said, “The Cure with blastbeats,” on some level I have respect for them trying something different, since Satan himself got fed up with Emperor-worship a decade ago. Is the staff of AMG wired into all the ironic mini-trends of the metal world? Is the Pope wearing a Mayhem shirt?
“I have a penchant for picking bands based on their names alone lately. For the most part, doing so has yielded some pretty damn good results. So when the Grymm Grab Bag™ belched forth The Camel, The Lion, The Child, the debut full-length from Seattle’s He Whose Ox Is Gored, you can say that I was a bit nervous. Long band name? Check. Nietzsche-inspired album title? Check. The sound labeled as “progressive doom”? Check.” Progressive doom is progressive… and doomy.
“After a slobbery storm of critical fellatio that even the Farmer’s Almanac would’ve had a tough time predicting, Deafheaven’s Sunbather ended up toppling Kanye West’s Yeezus as the mainstream’s champion of unbridled artistic genius in 2013. Far from the first band to follow the post-black-gaze muse, the near-consensus on Deafheaven’s supposed brilliance was monumental, creating a prime climate for followers to begin putting their own spin on the style.” Sigh…. Deafheaven is creating clones again, and they are sunbathing!
“Listening to Seagrave begets the age-old question: is it better to try something new and fall short, or rehash the same bullshit until we’re all shitting bowls of Iommi riffs and bleeding ‘retro-death metal’ CDs from every orifice?” If your orifices bleed retro-death for more than 4 hours, consult a physician.
“The French black metal scene has given us some truly great bands and releases through the years, especially of the avant-garde kind. The likes of Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Peste Noire, and even Alcest are still pushing out some of the most interesting and innovative metal music. This time around, it’s the French avant-garde black metal one-man project Antagoniste that introduces a début whose mission is to reach and eclipse the sonic standards set by his countrymen.” Trying to out weird the weird is a tough task.
“Three consecutive releases reviewed by three different writers on AMG? This must be unheard of. Carving a little niche as one of the better and more evocative offshoots from the much-maligned ‘blackga(y)ze’ genre, An Autumn for Crippled Children have produced their fifth full-length in the beautifully desolate The Long Goodbye.” Many an AMG writer has tried his hand at figuring these cats out. They’re all gone now….
“Intensity and drama unify my musical palette. As unalike as Count Bassie and Ulcerate are, they’re both able to serve up a shitton of excitement, albeit in quite different ways. But the differences between dramatic genres are still immense, which makes a Mono record quite the refresher in between this year’s big tech-death releases.” Here’s something a little bit different.
“A one-man black metal army of darkness – yes, like you I’m already cringing at the thought of spending a week or, God forbid, longer being tormented by fuzzed-out direction-less blackened murk! Somewhere in the midst of releasing their range of splits, EPs and their full-length (Worshipping Times of Old), German band Infestus switched from being a force of three, to being left to the power of one.” Madam X takes on the dank, dark depression of one-man project Infestus, will she end up cut up, depressed and alone? Read on and find out!
